We took one of the specially marked bike routes out of Paris, intending to reach the Canal de L'Ourcq, which I'd researched as a clear run to Claye-Souilly, about 30k to the east. Unfortunately, we took a right turn at the canal, instead of a left, and didn't discover the error until we saw a sign saying "Bastille this way".
We recovered from that, a five kilometer ride in the wrong direction, means an extra 10 overall, but I've certainly made worse errors.
We emerged once at a town called Villeparisis, because we'd run out of water, then continued on to our destination, Claye-Souilly, where we found a hotel from a chain called "Fast Hotels", which was pretty poor, unfortunately, but cheap.
In the evening, we rode our bikes a couple of K's to the restaurant area, and had dinner at a beaut little inexpensive restaurant, with lovely food and staff.
Next day, we continued along the canal, and reached Villenoy, where we had lunch, then on to Meaux, which is quite a large town, with a spectacular looking church.
Meaux is on the Marne, and after quite a long discussion, we decided we'd follow the river, to get to Trilport, since we'd got such good use out of waterside paths up to date. However, it turned out to be a very convoluted track, with a lot of forks, and were soon lost, but a couple of bicycle mounted police came and escorted us through the forest, and we ended up back on the canal de L'Ourcq, although it reads as the Marne on our map.
The friendly gendarmes (one a woman), directed us to Trilport from there, and we ended up at the camp ground.
We had an entertaining time talking to the manager, he spoke no English, but pigeon French did the trick, as it has done throughout this trip so far. Somehow, I've had the impression previously that many French were OK at English, but it hasn't been so this time.
We had quite a good night for our first camp, soft grass, nice shower. This shower was the kind that you press, and get only about 10 seconds, then you have to press it again. There was no adjustment, you just get the temperature that whoever sets it up thinks is right.
Next day, we bought a quiche for breakfast, and a "sandwich" for lunch. The "sandwich" is a baguette, this one ham and salad, which was the nearest I could get for vegan, the other choice at that boulangerie was ham and cheese! So, it looks like the diet is a write off on this trip.
We set out on the D603, which is marked red on our map, but got off that as soon as possible, because it was quite busy. We felt safe, but the noise makes it unpleasant. Our map has three colours of roads that are usable, the other two are yellow D roads, and C roads which are in white. There are also N and A roads, which are too busy to contemplate.
We spent the night at Chateau Thierry, in a motor home camping site. The machine that controlled the site would not let us in, because we only had a tent, but one of the other tenants there took pity on us and gave us the code for the showers and toilet.
Next day, to Eparnay, was much the same, 60k of glorious views, and we're staying in a beautiful Chambre d'Hote,owned by an ex Vigneron, who must be a terrific chap, because he gave us a free bottle of champagne from his vineyard.
We've done 200k since leaving Paris.
Around Epernay
We did a 60k ride on Wednesday, a ride recommended by our French cycling book, which had the usual wonderful vineyard views, but also graded into an area much like our south west, with cattle and grains. We stopped off at our host's son's champagne house, where we bought one of his bottles, which we sampled later, very nice. He also runs a Museum of Marriage, which we were going to visit, but since we got there at 11:50, and they shut for two hours from midday for lunch (normal here), we couldn't go in.
Today (Thursday), we went for a visit to the Moet-Chandon champagne house. There wasn't a lot we didn't know about the process, but it was interesting to visit the caves beneath the main street (there are kilometers of them), and appreciate the volume of the bottles stored there. We did learn that Moet is pronounced like that, not "Moey", as we do in Australia. I tried to dampen down Hannelore's enthusiasm as much as possible, but she kept saying things like "I'll never feel guilty about buying it again", which I didn't understand.
We did trip preparation after that, for the journey to Metz, 280k, not a minor undertaking. Things like bike repair, washing, finding hardware shops, etc.
At the end of the day, our host brought us some ratafia, a grape juice and grape alcohol mixture, and also some biscuits and cherry tart, that he'd made. We ate and drank with enthusiasm, and had one of our nice pigeon french conversations with him. We also finished off our champagne from the day before, then went downtown for dinner, where we had pizza, and a half bottle of pinot noir. Well, we have to keep our strength up for tomorrow's efforts.
